


Grayscale Images

by cipheredsong



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Virus, Angst, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Homesick Lance (Voltron), Intrusive Thoughts, M/M, Original Species
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2018-11-03 07:24:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10962495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cipheredsong/pseuds/cipheredsong
Summary: On a mission to form an alliance with a new planet, Lance has a run-in with a strange species of plant that gives him an even stranger virus-type illness. It doesn't seem to be that bad... until Lance's whole world is fading away around him. Or is he fading himself? He can't trust himself to think clearly, but he can't trust anyone else, either.





	1. Full Sunlight

**Author's Note:**

> So. This is a work inspired by a post from the incredible [lovelylangst](http://www.lovelylangst.tumblr.com) of tumblr - see the post [here](http://www.https://lovelylangst.tumblr.com/post/159840024804/okay-so-i-thought-about-this-randomly-one-day-but). I started out by drawing something based off of it... and then really wanted to write something about it. This is planned out as a several-part fic, and you could say that it took an unexpected turn in that there will be klance (I didn't really plan that originally). I would like to say that I may be updating a bit slowly, as I've got a lot going on right now, but I hope you enjoy reading! (:
> 
> (A brief warning: my tags are... possibly horrible. I'll likely add to them as I go so they make more sense.)

Lance was actually almost excited for this mission. Sure, it was just a diplomatic visit to a recently rescued planet for a meeting, but being on solid ground was always nice. When they’d saved the planet he had ended up in a healing pod, so he hadn’t actually seen what the planet looked like; finding out was going to be nice, too.

The less nice thing was that he was practically dead on his feet. He was running on two hours of sleep thanks to having to wake up early for ‘special training’ - also known as Coran trying to prepare everyone to act polite, which generally happened whenever they were visiting a planet with some special customs and expectations. At this point, Lance wasn’t sure if he could remember even half of what Coran had said.

He splashed water on his face, cold and refreshing, and then grabbed a towel to rub the water away. Exhausted or no, skincare mattered. There was no way he was skipping his routine just because of early morning training.

Lance stretched, raising his arms above his head, and went to go get into his formal outfit.

\---

When Lane showed up to the yellow lion’s hangar - that was the lion they would be riding in down to the ground: Allura had said they should take just the one lion to seem peaceful and respectful - everyone else was already there. He put on his best smile, although he had a sinking feeling that he had kept them all waiting. “Hey guys, all set to go?”

Hunk was about to reply when Keith said, “Yeah, and we’ve been ready for twenty minutes. What took you so long?”

Of course Keith would interject. Lance wanted so badly to make some witty comment in return, but his brain wasn’t quite functioning at full capacity. He blamed the lack of sleep, he’d never done well with little sleep. The best he could manage was something vaguely snarky. “Gotta look good, Mullet,” he managed to chirp. “Not that you and your complete disregard for skincare care about that. Sorry my perfection held you up.”

“Whatever, let’s just go. Your ‘perfection’ is going to make us late.” Inside Lance’s head, there was a little voice screaming for him to just call off this whole thing and go sleep. It was all he really wanted to do, however interesting a new (to him) planet might be, and Keith’s comment… he didn’t really even want to be arguing with Keith right now. But he didn’t just want to let things slide, either. Letting it slide would mean giving up. And Lance could not afford to give up.

He’d been struggling with everything for so long. He missed home, he missed his family. The Garrison had been difficult, but there he could still do things he loved, and he still had time to relax, to sleep, to call his family and just talk. There was always someone who would listen, even if he just wanted to ramble about how horrible some of his classes were. But space… the huge, terrifying, dark expanse of space had cut all of that off, and he hadn’t seen Earth in nearly a year now. It hurt to be separated from his family, and it hurt more that they probably thought Lance was dead.

Over the last few months, especially, Lance had begun to feel defeated. He worried that it was showing. He started putting even more effort into keeping a smile on his face. He was sick of fighting with Keith, but he kept doing that, too, because to just stop would look weird. He had the whole rivalry thing to keep going. And if what Keith said ever hurt Lance, he would shrug it off and keep going, just like always. He was Lance, completely normal Lance who was maybe spending just a little more time training than usual to keep his mind off of Earth, but that was fine.

Then, only a week ago, Lance had broken down. But it was after everyone was asleep that he cried, and he muffled his sobs with a pillow. Keith’s room was just down the hall, and he didn’t want to wake him up. He had never felt so helpless and scared and sad before, but he didn’t want to share it with everyone. It would throw off the whole team.

As long as he didn’t let his sleeplessness mess up the mask he’d been clinging to, Lance would be fine. He could sleep when he got back to the Castle and he would probably feel better after getting some rest. This couldn’t take too long.

It wasn’t until they were landing on the planet’s surface that Lance realized that no, it wouldn’t be totally fine, because his head was starting to hurt. He didn’t normally get headaches, and he had a feeling this was going to be a bad one.

He managed, however, to cheer up ever so slightly when he stepped out of the yellow lion and saw that they had landed in a paradise. That was really the only thing this place could be called. The area was just so green, covered with knee-length grass and flowers, with enormous trees growing all around, but not close enough together to block out the sun. And the sunlight, the sunlight was amazing. It was strong and warm, and Lance briefly closed his eyes to tilt his face upward and soak in that warmth. He only gave himself a second, though, before quickly hurrying after the rest of Team Voltron towards a small grouping of vehicles nearby.

The alien species was tall and deep amber in color, with huge eyes of a similar shade. They greeted Allura first, recognizing her as the leader of sorts, and Shiro was greeted as the leader of the paladins, but everyone else was basically ignored. Lance figured it had something to do with species customs, and he did think he remembered Coran saying something like that. Since he didn’t seem to be needed, he allowed his mind to wander, eyes focusing on some point in the distance between the trees as he daydreamed.

A few moments later - or maybe it was longer? - someone tapped Lance on the shoulder. He turned, eyes snapping back into focus, and saw Hunk.

With a broad smile, Hunk said, “Hey, Lance, we’ve got permission to walk around while Shiro and Allura talk things over! Things are going well, so they should be okay without us.”

Lance let Hunk’s easy smile be as infectious as it should be, even though it sort of hurt to smile right then. “Yeah, of course I’m coming! You think I’d miss out on a chance to explore this place?”

Hunk’s smile somehow managed to get even broader. Lance kept his own smile firmly plastered to his face as they joined Keith and Pidge. Coran told them something briefly, but just like earlier, it sort of slipped past Lance, and he really hoped it hadn’t been important information. And then they were all walking. Lance let himself drift to the back of the group, staying quieter than he normally would. It worked out fine, because Hunk and Pidge were excitedly discussing some project they were working on and modifications they wanted to make to some of the paladin suits, and Keith was being his silent surly-looking self. Lance might normally have started teasing him, but instead he tried to keep his eyes half-closed. At first the sunlight had been nice, but now it seemed to be making his headache build further.

It didn’t take much more walking for Lance to say, “Guys, I’m not feeling so great, I’m going to turn back.” He hadn’t wanted to share how he was feeling with them, but he had already forced himself to come on this mission where he apparently wasn’t even needed. If he wanted to go sit quietly, he figured it was justified.

Hunk was the first to turn, looking concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. Just pretty tired. I’ll see you guys in a while.” Lance saw the corner of Keith’s mouth twitch, as if he was considering saying something, but he didn’t.

Pidge nodded, and Hunk said, “Okay, we’ll see you soon! I’ll tell you if we find anything cool.” He gave Lance another concerned look, but followed Keith and Pidge as they kept walking. “If you need anything when we get back to the castle, let me know.”

Lance gave a tiny nod, and then he turned and walked in the other direction. It was a good thing that they hadn’t gotten far, because the pounding in his head had reached a new crescendo. He felt like he might throw up. And, with a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure that everyone was out of sight, he did just that, emptying what little was in his stomach into the bushes. Well. Nothing to ruin the beautiful atmosphere like throwing up. With a groan, he stumbled back onto his feet, feeling shaky, and then suddenly dizzy. “Oh no.”

The dizziness made it impossible to stay on his feet. He managed maybe a few steps before sitting down with a thump at the base of a tree, leaning back against the smooth bark. His arm scraped against something, though Lance really only realized that when his whole forearm started to feel numb. He quickly yanked it close to his chest, glancing down at it and briefly seeing scratch marks and tears in his sleeve before the world swam around him and went dark.

\---

Lance woke up to someone shaking his shoulder. “Lance! Hey, Lance!”

“Nope,” he mumbled, “he’s not here, leave a message after the beep.” He really, really wanted to sleep more.

“Oh, thank goodness. Lance, you’ve gotta wake up.” Lance registered Hunk’s most concerned voice and slowly blinked open his eyes, despite how heavy his eyelids felt.

It wasn’t just Hunk standing there, it was everyone, and looking worried. “Huh? Wh-what’d I miss?” Lance said, feeling exceptionally confused, tired, and… also stiff, he was very stiff.

Pidge, who was crouched down next to him and presumably had been the one shaking his shoulder, said, “When we went back to the yellow lion you were missing, and Coran said you hadn’t come back. We figured maybe you somehow got lost, but…” she trailed off. “Well, it looks like you didn’t. What happened?”

“I, uh… I really didn’t feel so great. I guess I blacked out.”

Lance heard a mumble of, “He _guesses_ ,” from Keith’s direction, and shifted his head slightly - ow, his neck was just as stiff as the rest of him - to glare at him, only to catch a concerned expression on Keith’s face, too.

Hunk looked guilty. “I’m sorry, you said you weren’t feeling so good, I should’ve noticed something was up…”

“Not your fault, buddy,” Lance said, easing himself into a normal sitting position. “At least my impromptu nap helped me feel a little better.” Everyone still looked worried. He tried to change the topic. “But how did negotiations go?”

Allura let a tiny smile appear on her lips at that. “Very well. We have new allies.”

Coran stepped in. “Which means we can get you back to the castle for some rest.”

Hunk nodded. “Yeah. Hey, what happened to your arm?”

Lance looked at it. He had forgotten all about his arm, honestly. It didn’t hurt or anything; in fact, it still felt a bit numb. All he said was, “I think I scratched it up when I fell.”

Pidge stood up, and Hunk reached over to offer Lance a hand. He let himself be mostly pulled to his feet. “Can you walk?” Hunk asked him, eyebrows furrowed. He looked like he was considering picking Lance up and carrying him back to the yellow lion, and as nice as being carried might have been, Lance thought it might be in his best interests to act like he was okay.

“Yeah, I can walk. Don’t worry, buddy.” He managed a small smile, for Hunk’s sake, and took a few shaky steps to prove his point. “See?” Part of his mind told him he should follow that up with a joke about how great he was, but he was too tired. He thought he saw Keith give him a weird look out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he looked over Keith was already looking away.

Coran said, “Well, let’s get moving, then, shall we? It’s getting rather dark out here.”

Lance’s mind started to drift somewhere along the walk to the yellow lion, and it didn’t stop until he was back in the castle’s med bay, getting his arm patched up by Coran. Like he was snapping out of a trance, he blinked several times and tried to figure out what was going on. It took a few seconds for him to understand that he must be more tired than he thought, and when Coran was finished with his arm, Lance thanked him and said he was going to go get some real sleep. Coran didn’t stop him, so Lance made a slow, strangely dreamlike trip back to his room. He felt oddly distanced from everything around him.

When his door slid open, he almost collapsed right onto his bed, so tired he could barely move. Lance managed to force himself to change into his pajamas and crawl under the blankets before closing eyes. Sleep swept over him like cool ocean waves, dragging him down to the depths of the sea.

\---

Lance woke up feeling like he had slept for a year. He rolled from his side onto his back and rubbed at his face, then sat up and pushed off his blanket, sliding out of bed and stretching slowly. Stretching brought his attention to the bandages on his right arm. There was a brief moment of confusion before he remembered scratching his arm on something. He was ready to ignore it and go shower when he did a double take, staring at his arm with renewed intensity.

Spreading out from under the bandages, the few veins he could see in his arm looked strangely pale, a silvery-gray. He bit his lip, fairly sure that _that_ wasn’t normal. He wondered if he should ask Coran about it, since it seemed like he had known a lot about the planet they had visited yesterday.

There was a sudden sickening twist inside him, as if he had suddenly fallen from a great height. He inhaled sharply, and as he wrapped his arms around himself, feeling suddenly empty inside, it was like a little voice in his head whispered, _Why bother asking? It’s nothing, and you’ll just waste precious time._

Lance blinked, unsure of where that thought had come from. It didn’t make sense. How would he be wasting time by asking a question, especially about something that might be dangerous?

_It’s a waste of time because you could be training. You should be working. Do you really want to let the team down? You already probably caused trouble yesterday - blacking out, forcing them to come find you._

Lance stared at his feet for a second, arms still wrapped protectively around himself. It actually made sense. He had probably caused a lot of trouble, and he shouldn’t force anyone to spend more time to worrying about him. He wasn’t going to make their whole stuck-in-space-trying-to-defeat-an-evil-empire situation any worse by relying on his teammates more than he could ever rely on himself.

With that thought, he got up to go change. A shower could wait until after some training - he would feel better if he could satisfy the urge that was telling him he needed to be better, he was sure.

As he left his room a minute later, he didn’t pay attention to the silver in his veins slowly spreading further up his arm. The long sleeve of his shirt hid it well.


	2. Sunset

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the lovely comments and all the kudos! It makes me so happy to know that people enjoy what I'm writing. I hope you enjoy this chapter (:

Lance regretted everything - most especially getting out of the shower. He missed the warm water already. Had the ship always been this cold, or was it just him? He wondered if he was coming down with something, some sort of space-flu, maybe.

He hadn’t run into anyone in the training room, which was unusual - it made him wonder if he had woken up in the middle of the night. He hadn’t checked the time before leaving his room, and it was otherwise pretty hard to tell. The lights in some rooms of the castle usually dimmed to simulate night as according to Altean time, which everyone had adjusted to, but much of the castle stayed bright, making it hard to tell what time it was.

Lance wandered in the general direction of the kitchen, hoping to find Hunk or Coran. It would be nice to have someone to talk to. He was feeling cold and lonely and, somehow, still tired, and Lance liked to be around other people. It cheered him up. And, when he was around other people, he worried less about being homesick and less skilled and more of a problem than a teammate.

The kitchen, however, was silent and dim. Lance sighed and walked in, the lights brightening as they sensed movement. He had no clue how to use any of Hunk’s alien ingredients, so food goo it was. As long as the dispenser didn’t act up again.

After retrieving his goo, Lance went and sat at the long table. The long, empty table. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to be sitting there - he felt worse than before, probably because he was so used to everyone sitting together, talking, sharing stories. This table was one of the best places in the castle for Lance to be most days, because it was usually the one place where everyone seemed happy. Even if they had just made it through a hard-won battle, everyone would manage at least one smile before going to relax or sleep or do whatever else needed to be done. Those smiles might actually be because they were all together, and it was good to know that they were Team Voltron, still in one piece and hanging in there.

Without that sense of cheer, the room felt dead. It was ruining Lance’s already miserable mood, and tearing down his admittedly already crumbling walls. He didn’t know what was wrong with his head - maybe he just needed some more rest, because normally his thought process wasn’t this depressing, no matter how bad a day he’d had... or how much he missed Earth.

Earth. He was out here protecting it, protecting the entire universe and his family, and what good was it doing him? You would think it would maybe build up his self esteem a little, being a part of forming a giant powerful robot. But no.

Keith walked into the room right then. Lance flinched a little and stopped picking at his food goo, looking away into a corner of the room and hoping that Keith wouldn’t talk to him, or maybe even leave. He had no such luck, though, of course. He could almost feel Keith’s eyes focusing on him, and wondered if he was about to be on the receiving end of some comment about how weird he was for not being asleep.

No comment came, however, and after a second footsteps moved toward Lance, and then Keith sat down in the chair right next to Lance’s. He was quiet for a moment, setting his own plate of food goo on the table without saying a word. And then he said, without looking at Lance, “I thought you could use some company.”

Lance’s shock seemed to freeze his vocal cords, because he suddenly couldn’t say a word. His mind ran over a dozen different ways to say thank you, but none of them would leave his mouth - maybe it was the surprise of someone caring that he was sitting there alone; maybe it was the surprise of it being Keith who cared that he was sitting there alone - either way, he was stuck staring like an idiot.

By the time he finally got the words out - “Th-thank you,” - Keith had glanced over at him and was starting to look uncomfortable, and the look stuck around even after he said it. But he didn’t get up and leave, and started poking at his food goo, occasionally taking a bite. Lance followed his example, and then, after a minute, added, “You didn’t have to come over here, so, really, thanks.” And because he was curious, he followed that up with a question. “How did you know I was in here?”

Keith shrugged. “I was heading to the training deck and spotted you when you were leaving,” he said. “I’m usually the only one who trains this late… or, well, early.”

Lance chuckled a little bit. Keith didn’t normally correct himself like that, and it felt almost like a joke - wait a second, Keith was smiling. Maybe it actually was a joke. It made Lance’s chuckle turn into a full-on laugh, which then cut off when something in his chest twisted painfully. He held back a whimper. There was no way he would show that kind of weakness when Keith was around to see it, even if he was being nicer than usual for some reason.

 _He would mock you for this. He’s only making jokes to mess with your head_. There was that voice again, slithering through his head, but what it was saying felt so _right_. It had to be the truth.

Lance left his face open as Keith said something else, but he closed off something inside of himself.

“Lance? Hey, Lance, are you still with me? I was asking why you were training.” The look on Keith’s face said something entirely different, but Lance didn’t argue or ask him what he had actually been saying. It wasn’t worth it.

“Oh, uh, yeah. I just couldn’t sleep. I’m feeling pretty tired now, though. I think I’m going to go back to my room.” Lance stood abruptly, disposing of his mostly uneaten food goo as he left the room. He could feel what had to be an accusatory, bitter glare from Keith burning into his back as he went.

\---

The door to Lance’s room hissed closed behind him and he leaned back against it, confused and frustrated. He didn’t understand why Keith had come to find him, and he didn’t know why he had gone and left so quickly when it seemed like Keith wasn’t angry for once. It might have been nice if he could get along with Keith for once. Rivalry was all well and good, but Lance was starting to realize that it was stupid when they were in space and needed to work together. And actually, he and Keith had been working together better recently, but the last few days, especially, had been… strange.

_Strange, yes, because he’s been acting hostile towards you again. He probably doesn’t want to be around you._

Lance shook his head at himself. “No,” he muttered aloud, “why would he come find me if he didn’t want to be around me?”

_To have a laugh, remember? He was practically mocking you - Keith never makes jokes._

It made sense, and Lance hated that it made sense. Why did it make so much sense? He crossed the room in a few strides to curl up on his bed again, his thoughts making him upset all over again.

He realized, when only moments away from falling asleep, that he should probably get back into his pajamas. Lance would rather be comfortable if he was going to be miserable.

As he was slipping on his shirt, he caught a glimpse of his arm again. Quickly, his movements suddenly stiff, he yanked the shirt back off and stared at the arm as if it were something foreign. The silver had spread, curling through his veins nearly all the way up to his shoulder. It looked like venom spreading through him, and though Lance couldn’t feel any pain, and his arm didn’t appear to be swelling - he poked it several times to be sure of both - he was immediately frightened. Out here in space, something unfamiliar could be dangerous, and he knew that well enough after some of the mishaps he and the rest of the team had suffered through.

Lance didn’t like being scared and alone, just as he didn’t like feeling homesick and being alone. They were bad combinations. _But if you go see Coran about this now, you’ll probably be waking him up. He’ll lose sleep because of you. It doesn’t hurt and it’s not causing any ill effects; just let it be, you’ll be fine._

The voice just had to be so sensible. But if it could explain this, maybe everything else it had explained wasn’t just exaggeration as Lance had privately been hoping. It seemed nothing was private when it came to the voice, though. Probably because it was Lance’s own voice. There was no way it could be anything but that, because Lance refused to be going crazy. He wasn’t the type to go crazy. And he would never let himself crack under pressure, even in this situation. It would be like failing a challenge.

He tugged his shirt back on and sat on his bed with his arms wrapped around his knees, pulling his legs in close to his chest. Crazy or no, if he couldn’t get himself under control, he was going to really fall apart, and probably in front of everyone. He knew what it meant to be a defender of the universe, and he was pretty sure that nowhere in the job description did it call for him freaking out because he felt homesick and lonely. He could deal with it, and on his own, too.

_Sure, deal with it. And keep dealing with how you drag everyone else down, too, while you’re at it._

He firmly told himself to _stop_ and, rather than letting himself stay curled up, Lance stretched out on his back, pulling his blanket up over his chest. He felt more vulnerable in the position, yet at the same time better, because being curled into a ball made him feel small and useless.

Lance had never felt useless back home. Maybe that was because he always had something to do. He was either playing with his younger siblings, or helping to make dinner, or out at the beach with his entire family, or doing chores. Or sometimes he was out at the beach alone, and he would swim, or find a quiet corner of the beach and dance. And sometimes he was even dragged out to run errands, not that he actually minded that much.

And he’d adjusted to the Garrison, too. Lance hadn’t always liked it there, but it was a step towards his dreams. If he was in the Garrison, he was closer to reaching space, and closer to finding some unexplored planet or soaring further out into the universe than anyone from Earth had ventured before. He’d had Hunk and Pidge to hang out with, and he’d had fun sometimes, playing pranks with them and sneaking around, going out late at night every once in a while.

Well, look at him now. Lance was definitely farther out in space than he had ever even dreamed of going. But it wasn’t much like he had imagined it. He had never thought that he would have to fight a war that was thousands of years old. He had never dreamed of flying an ancient robotic lion made by aliens.

Lance actually managed a quick smile as he thought about that word - alien. He was just as much an alien out here as anyone else. It was actually kind of cool to know that a lot of the planets he’d visited had never seen a human before; it made him feel unique. But it was another of those things that made him feel lonely at the same time. Being an ‘alien’ in the eyes of so many served as a reminder of how far away Lance was from home, too, just like so many other things.

Lance sighed heavily and turned over onto his stomach to bury his face in his pillow, not caring that it made it hard for him to breathe. He wanted so badly to be able to squash his emotions for a while, for once. He was making himself look stupid because of them. How did Keith do it? He only ever seemed to get frustrated, or angry, and no one looked at him like he was an idiot for it. Shiro just acted like he didn’t even have emotions half the time - he put the rest of the team before himself. It wasn’t like it would change things if Lance acted like either of them, though. _You’ve got a reputation for uselessness, right? Can’t change that in a day._

The last thing he wanted right then was to start crying, but his eyes wouldn’t seem to listen to his commands to stop. Before long Lance had created a damp spot on his pillow, but he still refused to lift his face. He did briefly think about the fact that this was going to wreak havoc on his skin, but the part of him that didn’t want to move drowned out the thought.

When he finally pulled himself together long enough to actually lift his head to take a breath, Lance forced himself to roll over onto his side, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. He intentionally avoided looking at his arm, having a feeling that things would just be getting worse. There were pretty limited options for things to do in the castle, at least that Lance knew of, but he felt like he needed to get up and do something in order to prevent himself from just lying in bed forever. He had told Keith that he was tired, and in the moment it had been true, but now he was back to being wide awake.

Lance made himself sit up. He leaned over the edge of his bed and slowly slid out of it. _Come on Lance, get up. Do something. Maybe I'm just in a… a slump. I’m willing to bet that Pidge is awake and working on something; maybe I can help with it._

Lance grabbed his robe and tugged it on as he headed out his door for the second time in a few hours. His bare feet made little noise on the cold metal floor as he walked. He let himself fantasize for a moment about being this stealthy all the time. Pretty ridiculous to think about - stealth was something that he definitely wasn’t known for - but daydreams were just that, dreams. He didn’t get much time to daydream lately, so he felt like he had a right to it.

Lance was at Pidge’s room relatively quickly, and tapped quietly on the door. He was rewarded with a frustrated-sounding, “Come in.”

The door slid open and Lance walked in just in time to narrowly miss being hit by a flying metal object. Pidge was fiddling with a small robot, or that’s what it looked like, with a scowl on her face, and she snapped as Lance walked up to her, “Nothing is working!”

“What isn’t working?” Lance said curiously, leaning over to see.

Pidge gestured to the bot. “This. I found it in some storage closet, Coran said I could do something with it. But it’s not responding to anything I do.” She glanced across the room at the metal piece lying on the floor by the door. “Could you grab that?”

Lance crossed the room to grab the piece and tossed it to Pidge, who caught it with one hand and quickly set to work fitting it into the robot. Lance went and sat down next to her. “Geez, Pidge, have you even slept?”

Pidge chuckled darkly. “Sleep is for the weak, Lance.” She looked up just in time to catch Lance’s disapproving look. “Look, I know that you need your beauty sleep and whatever-” Lance rolled his eyes, and Pidge tried again. “I mean, I’ll sleep soon. I get it, I need some sleep to function. But it’s not even that late.”

“Nope, not late - early.” Lance nudged Pidge’s shoulder. “And that’s coming from Keith, who somehow always seems to know the time.”

Pidge managed to look slightly sheepish. “Don’t tell Shiro? He’ll kill me if he finds out that I stayed up again. The last time he caught me, he told me that I ‘need sleep to be healthy’ or something. Pretty ironic, since I think he just doesn’t sleep at all some nights.”

Lance shrugged. “Yeah, no problem. I can keep a secret.”

Pidge adjusted her glasses and went back to the robot. “I could dispute that, but I’ll let it be. Just two words: February fifth.”

Lance winced. “Point taken. There was no need to remind me of that one.” _See, look, another of those possibly fatal flaws_ , his mind whispered. He tried to keep acting normal, like the statement didn’t immediately weigh him down. “This one’s staying with me and me alone.”

Pidge nodded, slightly absentmindedly, already more focused on her robot than anything else again. “Hmm. Well, okay… but if you break your word…” She looked up for the briefest of moments, flashing a toothy, menacing grin. “You know what’s coming your way.”

Lance forced an awkward laugh and pretended to inch away. “Uhhh, yeahhh, you need not worry. Your secret is extremely, entirely, totally safe with me.”

Pidge’s smile became slightly more natural and a bit less worrying. “Good, good, just checking.”

After a moment’s pause, Lance said, “So what are you trying to do with this thing, anyway?”

“Not much. I guess I’m aiming for something a little bit like Rover - something that’ll be able to help out on missions, maybe. There are some more lying around that I could start up if I can get this one to work.” Pidge connected a few wires. “What made you come here, anyway?”

Lance shoved away the urge to just tell Pidge everything. It had been a while since he had gotten the opportunity to talk to Pidge one-on-one, and he’d almost forgotten what it was like, but he reminded himself that there were several reasons he shouldn’t let Pidge know about all of his worries. 

Firstly, he had no guarantees that she would understand him. She might think he was going insane - or she could just not see the issue the same way as he did. It wasn’t like Pidge would invalidate what he was thinking and feeling intentionally, but she might do it by accident. Pidge wasn’t always the best at understanding _feelings_. Bring her a broken machine and she could do anything with it, but she could be a little bit insensitive at times.

And second, he didn’t know if Pidge would even believe him. It was a little unbelievable, after all, although they had certainly believed worse… and even if she did believe him, he still didn’t know how she would react.

Lance realized that he had once again been silent a moment too long, though it looked like Pidge hadn’t noticed. “Eh, I just couldn’t sleep, and I thought you might be doing something cool.”

Looking away from the robot for a split second to grin at Lance again, Pidge said, “So you’re finally admitting that my robots are cool.”

“Hey, I never said they weren’t cool!” Lance crossed his arms. _Look at that, you don’t encourage anyone, either. You probably make everyone feel terrible_. Ugh, more stupid thoughts. Although Lance still wasn’t really sure if they were that stupid.

Pidge laughed. “I think I may just finish this tomorrow, though. I guess I could use a little sleep.”

Lance bounced onto his feet, ignoring the heaviness in his limbs at the realization that he was about to go back to wandering around the castle, and reached down to give Pidge a hand up. She put down the tool in her hand and accepted the help, yawning quietly. “Night, Pidge,” Lance said over his shoulder on his way out the door. “Or, well, morning.”

There was no answer, and Lance guessed that Pidge had already fallen asleep. She was always more tired than she thought. As the door slid closed, though, Lance thought that he heard Pidge mumble something. He couldn’t catch any words. The voice in his head made him wonder if it had been about him.

He sighed and turned to walk away down the hall. He could probably just pace for a while to tire himself out again. Then he would figure out what to do next. Maybe Coran would be awake soon and he could finally pull himself together and ask about his arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized I completely forgot (as I seem to do often) in the last chapter to say that I'm [on tumblr](http://cipheredsong.tumblr.com) if anyone ever wants to come say hi, ask questions, etc.! I'd love to talk to people.


	3. In the Darkness Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to add some warnings in here really quick for this chapter - there are minor injuries, and also brief descriptions of drowning, death, and blood.
> 
> I listened to this on repeat while writing the first part of the chapter, and I highly recommend it: [Diversion Rush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhFXZexlO2M).

Lance took off in a dead sprint, hearing, moments later as he took a sharp right, the loud thump of someone hitting a corner behind him. He somehow managed to pick up the pace still further. _Nope nope nope nope they are NOT going to catch me! Not this time_.

They had been running through this training exercise over and over for the past three days, and Lance was sick of it, and also sick of failing at it. The idea behind it was learning how to escape a large group of pursuers, and so each paladin was taking a turn sprinting through the castle, chased by everyone else, plus a few robots that Pidge, Hunk, and Coran had set up, as well as the gladiator.

It was honestly a nightmare for Lance. He was pretty fast, but some of the strategies employed by the ‘enemy’ were, well, unusual. And some of them were also possibly very unfair - like that one time that he’d been dogpiled - but he wasn’t going to be the first one to complain and seem like he couldn’t handle the challenge.

Thanks to all this, for a lot of reasons Lance usually ended the training unconscious, or pinned down, or being thrown into a wall. The one who caught him most often was, of course, Keith. And, when he was taking a turn doing the chasing, he usually got defeated easily by whoever he was pursuing, which was especially embarrassing when his opponent was Keith, because Keith beat him in seconds every time, leaving Lance burning with a mixture of shame and resentment.

He snapped into sharp focus. Not this time, he wasn’t losing this time. Last night he had prepared for this. He had walked through the castle several times, mentally mapping out the route he would take, every curve and corner that he could turn into an advantage - it wasn’t like he had been sleeping well, anyway. Later, if anyone found out, he would probably be called silly for taking a simple training exercise so seriously, but it would be worth it if he finally managed to win.

Lance reached for his bayard and activated it, setting it to stun. The rules said that it was only fair for him to have a weapon as well, but if he was lucky, this time he wouldn’t actually have to use it. His strength wasn’t in his stamina in this kind of training, so he was going for pure speed. He would outrun them quickly and be done with this, and the supposedly good-natured teasing that came with it.

The footsteps behind him sounded light; it was probably Pidge, which made sense - she was a lot smaller than everyone else. They were beginning to fade out, and Lance guessed that Pidge was falling behind thanks to her shorter legs. He slowed down ever so slightly, trying to save his strength for the real chase. Hunk wasn’t great when it came to the actually chasing, but he was usually waiting to ambush Lance, and Keith and Shiro were both more than capable of running Lance down. Plus there were the robots to worry about.

_There_. Lance heard sudden pounding footsteps and spotted a blur of white and yellow from the corner of his eye as Hunk, in full armor, launched himself out of a side corridor to block Lance’s path.

Lance had prepared for an ambush like this one. He leaped up and pushed off the wall once with his right foot, soaring in a neat arc over Hunk’s outstretched arms and cannon. Hunk swivelled quickly behind him, taking aim with the cannon at Lance’s retreating back, but Lance took a quick left turn into a different hallway. This was fine, he had gone this way last night, too.

He lifted his bayard, holding it slightly below shoulder height as he ran. He had a feeling that he was about to get another surprise.

Lance was proven right when the gladiator appeared at the hallway’s end, sword raised as it charged forward. He grinned and blasted it down with two quick shots, and leaped over it as it tumbled to the floor. That one was almost too easy.

_It won’t stay this easy_ , the small voice in the back of his head said. _You’re going to fail again_. The voice had become a constant in Lance’s life over the past week. He hadn’t spoken to Coran about his arm, and he had gone so far as to steer the topic of conversations away from himself a lot of the time when he was with the other paladins. No one had found it strange so far, so Lance kept going. Maybe no one would be suspicious - it seemed like he could get away with it, so far.

Lance shoved the voice down again, and focused once more on running. Running, and breathing as evenly as possible. His hallway joined up with the next, taking a right turn, and Lance thought he heard the sound of someone running behind him. He whipped around, just in time to catch Shiro coming up right behind him, an Altean staff gripped in one hand. Lance ducked the first strike, but the next caught him in the ribs, and he stumbled backwards with all the air knocked out of his lungs. Shiro didn’t stop there, though: he lunged forward again, the staff at the right angle to knock Lance unconscious.

Lance used what little air and energy he had to roll out of the way and push himself back to his feet. He needed to get himself some room to move without Shiro in his way - his weapon was meant for long-range combat, which was part of what left him at such a disadvantage in this training exercise. Lance gritted his teeth as another blow caught his shoulder, and made a mental note to train with one of the staffs as soon as possible. Not only would it be helpful to know how to use an extra weapon, he would know how to fend off Shiro: the man was lethal with one of those things.

Lance lunged past Shiro as soon as an opening appeared, and took several small steps forward before twisting to fire a shot at where Shiro’s shoulder had been only a second before. But Shiro had already moved, stepping in to strike Lance in the chest, sending him flying again.

On the ground, the air knocked out of him again, Lance tried to figure out what to do. At this rate Keith was going to find them, and maybe Pidge as well, and then he’d be hopelessly outnumbered, with no chance of finishing the exercise.

He finally inhaled, and just barely managed to dodge Shiro’s next strike, which would have knocked him unconscious. The staff landed just next to Lance’s head, clipping his ear. He ignored the pain that flared up and radiated into his head, and turned as if he was about to try to run again. Shiro immediately propelled himself forward, ready to end the fight.

As he did that, Lance spun on his heel and fired his bayard directly at Shiro. Shiro, intent on catching Lance, had no time to slow down and dodge the shot. It caught him in the shoulder and, being set to stun, knocked him to the ground. Lance would have celebrated the success, but he knew it would give away his position. Instead, he kept his mouth shut and sprinted off again, racing past Shiro and up the hallway.

It was maybe fifteen seconds before Lance heard the sound of a blaster charging up somewhere near him. He couldn’t tell exactly where it was, but he knew he only had a moment before it was ready to fire. While he didn’t know its location, Lance did know exactly what he could do to throw off the shot. A blaster made a noise when it fired, and Lance would have just a fraction of a second to dodge the blast. If he timed it right, he could use that shot to locate whatever robot was targeting him and destroy it.

He was waiting for the shot for less than a second, but it felt like forever, because he knew that if he messed this up it was over. _And you’ll keep being a failure. They know you’re a failure, and if this keeps up they’re going to stop respecting you at all_.

He wasn’t going to fail. He was not.

The blast hit the ground as Lance sidestepped at just the right moment. There, the shot had come from his left. He swiveled and fired in one smooth movement, taking out the robot. That was three down - the gladiator, Shiro, and this robot. He had a ways to go, but he had successfully taken out one major enemy. Hopefully things would get easier from here on.

Deciding to avoid being predictable, Lance slowed his pace, moving at a walk instead of a run. He shifted his gaze from side to side, trying to avoid focusing on anything in particular so that his eyes would catch any sudden movement.

He wasn’t ready, though, when Pidge dropped out of the air vents in the ceiling above him. She had removed the cover so quietly that Lance hadn’t caught the noise, and then she leaped from the ceiling to his shoulders. Lance let out a yell, thinking for a second that he had been attacked by some creepy alien parasite sitting in wait in the vents for its next victim, and tried to throw off the weight on his back. He was unsuccessful: Pidge was clinging on tightly. She wrapped an arm around his neck, effectively preventing him from breathing with the pressure.

Lance ground his teeth together and finally threw Pidge off with a quick twist. She rolled across the floor and jumped back up onto her feet. She was _way_ too good at taking hits. Lance aimed his bayard, and Pidge quickly activated hers. 

It was a standoff for a moment, Pidge unable to come any closer without being blasted, but Lance being unable to fire a shot without Pidge dodging it and attacking him. Then Pidge flicked some sort of remote into her palm and pressed a button.

Lance had a feeling that Pidge had just activated something that he wasn’t going to like. It turned out that he was right. Several small robots burst into the hallway from the same vent that Pidge had leaped from. Lance was ready to dismiss them as a distraction at first, although they were still something to worry about - everything was something to worry about in a real fight - but then they sprouted multiple blasters each. And were those spikes on one of them?

Lance swallowed hard and raised his bayard. He took down two of the robots almost immediately, but it was like the others knew where he would be shooting and easily avoided the laser blasts. He was forced to dive away as one of them swerved up right next to his head and unleashed all of its firepower. _I really want to stop hitting the floor_. 

“You know, Pidge,” he said as he smacked one of the robots away with his rifle, “these things are evil, even for you.”

Pidge snickered and charged him, the edge of her bayard lighting up. “I don’t think so! I think they’re just _wonderful_.” The last word was emphasized as she jabbed her bayard into Lance’s back. Lance felt a jolt of electricity shudder through him, and yelped as he wrenched himself away.

“And,” Lance said dramatically, hiding the fact that he was struggling to catch his breath, “your bayard is evil too.” Then he sprinted several steps forward, leaped up and kicked off the wall, and grabbed onto the edge of the vent that Pidge had come from before hauling himself in and throwing the cover across with his feet.

“Hey!” Pidge yelled angrily from beneath him. Lance grinned to himself, knowing that she couldn’t reach the vents on her own from the floor. She would either have to spend time figuring out a way up, or would have to head for another entrance into the vents. Either way, he could get a moment to rest before flinging himself back into the training.

Lance shuffled forward through the vents, knowing full well that Pidge could hear him. He heard her following him from the hallways below for a moment, and then heard her dash off. The second her footsteps were gone, he shuffled right back into place near the spot where he’d entered the vents.

After waiting just a moment to listen for the robots in the room below and guessing, when he heard nothing, that they had followed Pidge, Lance removed the covering of the vent as quietly as he could and lowered himself as close to the floor as possible before dropping down to it. He landed in a crouch, trying to stay as quiet as possible. He needed to aim for stealth now, and stay as alert as possible. If Pidge had snuck up on him, then Keith probably could, too, and there were other dangers.

Lance set off down the hallways once again. He was still certain of where he was, but now he might have to change the route he had been hoping to take a bit, since he didn’t know if he would run into Pidge somewhere along that path.

Now that he was moving cautiously, time stretched out, feeling painfully slow. Lance moved through the corridors as quietly as he could in full armor, his bayard still at the ready. At least if someone charged him from most angles he would be able to stop them.

And someone did charge him after a few minutes - Hunk, again, yelling a battle cry. Lance heard his footsteps several seconds before he actually came around a corner. He never liked having to take out Hunk, but really, this time he had made it too easy. Running straight at him from a distance? He knew that Lance was a good enough marksman to take him down. _Or maybe he doesn’t think you’re that good_. Lance bit his lip at the thought, but took the shot. Hunk was down, knocked back against a wall, and Lance kept going.

That was one of his issues with this training, honestly. Having to knock out his friends. But Allura, with a strange and faraway look in her eyes, had said when it was mentioned that they had to be prepared to fight anyone and everyone, and no one had argued.

Now that Hunk was down, only Pidge, Keith, and some robots were left on Lance’s tail. Lance knew that when his blaster had gone off he had lost his chances of continuing with the stealth route, so he ran again. This time it wasn’t a dead sprint so much as a quick jog. Lance still didn’t put away his bayard, knowing that he might need to use it at any moment.

Trouble arrived almost instantaneously in the form of Keith. This was the challenge that Lance had known was coming to meet him, and he hadn’t been looking forward to it. Keith launched himself around a corner just as Lance turned it, his sword missing Lance’s side by under an inch. Lance hissed through his teeth and fired off a couple close-range shots with his bayard to try to get some distance in between himself and Keith, but the effort was a failure. Keith just dodged the shots and kept coming.

Lance had to resort to defense as Keith kept attacking, his strikes sickeningly fast and accurate. Lance’s shield, glowing on his arm, flashed brighter blue with every hit.

“Geez, mullet, and here I thought you might leave ‘easy mode’ for once,” Lance puffed in between dodges and blocks. “Is this all you’ve got?” He was struggling to keep up with Keith, but he hoped that maybe, if he taunted him, he could distract him and get him to slip up.

Keith’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not even close to being ready for hard mode,” he said. “Besides, I reserve that for people who don’t look like they’re dancing while trying to evade me.” 

_Ohhh, he did not just say that_. “You want dancing, mullet? I can dance better than this.” Lance felt new strength surging into his limbs. He was going to beat Keith at this if it was the last thing he ever did. _Maybe it will be_ , the voice in his head snickered, _since you’re not going to manage it, and if there was a real enemy you would be dead_. 

Lance dodged the next strike with a spin, and the next by doing a quick twist that had him nearly bent over backwards. It was a good thing that he was flexible. But was that a small smile on Keith’s face? _He thinks this is funny. He thinks you’re not good enough and he can still beat you_. For once, instead of bringing Lance down, the voice encouraged him. He would make Keith see that he was more than good enough.

“So, mullet,” he said as casually as he could, “what’s your policy on people who aren’t dancing?”

Keith looked confused for a second, and then almost worried, like he couldn’t believe Lance was about to fight him head-on. Then his face slipped into a neutral expression. “My ‘policies’ are based on skill level, actually.”

This was working. With a final elegant twirl, Lance stopped, raising his shield as if telling Keith to come and get him. “Well, isn’t that a shame. And here I was looking for an actual fight.”

Keith froze up at that moment, and Lance took the advantage while he could in a way that Keith probably wasn’t expecting. He turned and raced off down the hallway. “But since I can’t have one, I’ll just have to leave!” he yelled over his shoulder.

It would be only a second before Keith followed him, and Lance knew it. But he was hoping that with his head start he would be able to sprint his way to safety. Keith was fast - really fast - but Lance had noticed that he couldn’t always keep up the speed for long distances. Hopefully, a chase all through the castle would be too much for him.

As Keith yelled, “Oh no you don’t!” and started chasing him, Lance started to feel more than just anger - there was a surge of adrenaline, the kind that usually kicked in when he was in a fight or flight situation. He had no idea why ancient predator-and-prey instincts were kicking in, but he didn’t like it. For the briefest of moments he had some clarity, and he realized that the adrenaline was making him push himself too hard.

And then he tripped over his own feet, face hitting the floor hard enough for Lance to be left seeing stars. The pain immediately burst forth, mainly centered around Lance’s nose, mouth, and chin. Keith caught up to him, but Lance didn’t even notice, sitting on the ground clutching his face.

Lance had honestly dealt with a lot worse. There was the explosion he had flung himself in front of to save Coran, the time he had tangled with the wild… whatever-they-weres on Dranchar VI, that hadn’t been pretty… and there were all the times he had been injured in battle… you could say that he had been in the healing pods a lot. But for some reason this pain, which he had honestly caused himself, was apparently his breaking point. Lance curled himself into a ball against the wall and tried to keep it together, waiting for the pain to die down.

After a few seconds, when the intensity of the pain had faded ever so slightly, Lance realized that Keith was crouched down next to him. He uncovered one of his eyes.

“Hey, Lance, are you okay?” Keith was managing to not look too amused. _It’s nice that he can hide it, but I know how stupid I am. He might as well laugh at me_. Lance blinked as he tried to figure out how to respond, but the voice in his head drowned out the thoughts he wanted to think. _Not good enough, never good enough, I was so close_.

“Lance?” Keith reached out and Lance flinched away. Things hadn’t been this bad for most of the week after that first night dealing with the thoughts, and he didn’t know why it was so much worse right now. He didn’t want anyone to touch him, he didn’t want to say anything because it might come out wrong and alert his friends to what was happening to him. They couldn’t know this new weakness.

“Lance, I need you to answer me!” Keith grabbed Lance’s shoulder, and even though it was well-covered by armor, Lance jerked away, which made his face hurt again. He curled into a tighter ball.

“I’m fine,” Lance mumbled. “J-just stop.” It didn’t escape him that his voice was shaking.

Keith took a slow breath that Lance could hear, and then exhaled equally slowly. “Lance, I’m just worried. Can I see your face? You fell pretty hard.”

_Yes, because you’re stupid and you got scared - if you’re scared of your friends, how will you ever face your enemies, hm?_ “Give me a sec.” Lance was trying and failing to sound calm, and from what he could see when he glanced to his left, Keith was looking pretty worried.

He was going to have to act normal and face this. Carefully, Lance uncovered his face and turned to Keith.

Keith winced, and Lance really didn’t like the look of that. Keith didn’t wince for nothing. “Your nose is bleeding,” Keith pointed out in a calm tone, “and your lip. That doesn’t look fine to me.”

Lance resisted the urge to cover his face again, and tried hard not to answer before he could think about his words, but they exploded out of him anyway. “Keith, if it was you, you would be fine! So don’t play along with me and act like I’m seriously injured when you don’t think so! If I’m this useless and I need someone to save me when I bang my face into a wall in a fight, then how am I supposed to be a paladin?” Lance flung himself to his feet and did his best to storm off down the hallway.

He only made it a few feet before Keith caught his arm. _Faster than you, better than you, stronger than you_. Lance ground his teeth together and spun around. Keith’s calm facade was gone. “Okay, Lance, so you’re right, I wouldn’t be bothered. What does it matter? It hurt you, and so I worried! Where’s the problem there?”

Lance’s instincts screamed at him to avoid this conflict. It was going to be ugly, and it was already stripping away his armor, leaving his pathetic true self bare for everyone to see. But he held his ground, ignored his instincts, because he never could back down from a challenge set by Keith. And this felt like a challenge. 

“The problem is that it means I’m the weak link, Keith! If that happened in a battle, would you be this worried? Because if you were, I would be distracting you, and then the rest of the team, and I would mess everything up.” By the end of the last sentence Lance had stopped shouting, unable to keep raising his voice, but his bitter tone stayed the same.

Keith dropped Lance’s arm. Lance hoped that he was realizing that what he’d said was true. With Keith no longer holding him back, he turned and swiftly left the hallway by taking a right turn. This wasn’t training anymore, so he wasn’t going to bother with finishing the course - he’d technically been caught, and Keith could tell anyone that if they asked where Lance was. He was going to his room.

The quiet was a nice change. Lance decided to enjoy it while he could - that probably wouldn’t last long, since he hadn’t found any way to put a lock on his door and someone would definitely come to bother him with more worries about his face.

With a sigh, Lance started taking off his armor. The breastplate took longer to get off than he would have liked, since he ended up being extremely careful to keep it from touching his face on the way. He noticed the blood all over his hands right before going to change into normal clothing. That was probably from the nosebleed Keith had mentioned. He should get rid of it.

Lance headed into his bathroom and gaped at himself when he caught sight of his reflection. He had been the one to put a mirror in here - most of the smaller bathrooms didn’t have them - but right now he regretted it.

His face was absolutely covered in blood and red patches from where he had skidded a bit along the floor. His nose looked a little crooked. _Holy crow, I think I broke it_. Lance stared blankly at his reflection for a second after that realization, and then turned on the water in the sink, his movements stiff and mechanical. He cleaned his hands off first, and then cautiously rubbed at a little of the blood on his face. It was sore, but not too bad. He cleaned off most of the blood there, too, then rinsed his hands again and took a second look at his face.

Lance’s nose was definitely broken. He touched it gingerly, feeling pain bloom where his fingers landed. He was either going to have to snap it back into place or let it heal crooked, because going for help for something this minor was not an option.

He opted to fix it himself. There was no way he was letting his nose heal crooked. _No one likes you anyway. Have any of those aliens actually responded to your flirting?_

Lance gritted his teeth, steeled himself, and grabbed his nose. There was a click, accompanied by a new and horrible burst of pain. “Ow,” he hissed. He gripped the edge of the sink tightly and tried to wait out the pain. It did fade a little bit after the initial burst, but not by much.

Lance was then interrupted by the muffled sound of someone knocking on his door. He left the bathroom quickly, shutting the door behind him to hide any blood he might have left behind, and went to see who it was. It wasn’t like he would be left alone if he ignored the knocking.

He paused right before opening the door. Shiro and Hunk wouldn’t be awake yet, and they probably wouldn’t have run into Keith and heard about his fall yet even if they had been awake. And Pidge had been nowhere near Keith - plus Pidge would know to leave Lance alone for a bit. It had to be the mullet himself.

Lance really, really didn’t want to open the door now. But he would look strange if he didn’t, and he knew it.

_You can’t afford to look any weirder to all of them_. There was that voice, which still really was sensible much of the time. But Lance ignored it for once, even though it repeatedly prodded at him for doing so. He wasn’t going to open the door. Not to Keith. Not now.

Instead, he quietly said, “I don’t want to talk right now,” through the door, hoping that would be good enough. It must have been, because the knocking stopped.

Lance went and changed out of the black suit he wore under his armor. The sleeves had some blood on them, but he could fix that later. For now, he just changed into his normal clothing.

He tried not to look down at his arms and chest as he did so. Over the last week, the silvery veins had spread from his arm up into his chest, and across to his other arm, and Lance still hadn’t told anyone about them.

The silver tracing its way under his skin proved to be too hard to ignore, and Lance looked down after a moment. It didn’t look too different from the way it had yesterday - until he looked at his right arm and shoulder. The silver wasn’t just in his veins anymore. It was like someone had poured a pool of silver-gray ink under his skin, and the pool had spread up and down his arm and along the very edge of the right side of his chest as well. Lance’s mouth was suddenly too dry, and he was shaking. There was no way that this was normal or okay. He could tell that there was something wrong with him, but he still didn’t want anyone to see it; even as he told himself that he should really go and get someone to look at this now, his instincts screamed for him to hide.

Lance had a bad feeling that his legs were going to give out under him, so he took some quick steps backward and sat down on his bed, fumbling to tug his shirt on. His panic suddenly dissolved. He didn’t understand why, and tried to reach for it again, almost missing it, because it felt very wrong to be calm about this.

He collapsed back against the pillow. It wasn’t his plan to fall asleep, but, somehow, he did. And sleep didn’t come slowly, either - it was like plummeting off a cliff into blackness, and Lance wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.

\---

Lance was running again, through white hallways, but smooth and seamless and circular, lit with some light source that he couldn’t see. There were curves and turns and twists, but they all blurred together thanks to the way the hallways looked.

He had originally thought hallways, but really they were more like tunnels. They had that strange, subterranean depths feeling to them. Lance didn’t know why he was running, but he felt the same sense of panic that he had felt earlier, when Keith was chasing him.

He made the mistake of looking over his shoulder.

A tangled web of dark tendrils was swiftly approaching, snaking through the tunnels like an evil, venomous creature. As Lance ran, it overtook him, and he was surrounded by it. Surrounded by darkness.

A hissing sound became audible. Slowly it became something more like static. Lance didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to hear it. Something within him said that it wasn’t anything he should hear. It seemed, though, that there was no outrunning the darkness. The static grew louder, and Lance started to hear words - quiet, mumbled, unintelligible.

He clamped his hands down over his ears, trying to block out the noise. It grew louder, and louder still, until it was drowning out everything in Lance’s head. The words were almost understandable. Lance, desperate, screamed for it to stop.

He fell into the tangled blackness.

The sound was gone, and the words with it. Lance hung suspended in the blackness, though he couldn’t tell exactly what he was suspended from. All he knew was that it tugged at his shoulders and arms, making him feel helpless. He felt like a puppet, there to be moved about by something or someone else.

The thing suspending him moved. And Lance immediately knew that he might as well be a puppet, because he was helpless to stop it. He was tugged this way and that, slammed into invisible walls, flipped and twisted until he was dizzy and sick and could barely tell, in the blackness, which way was up and which was down.

Finally, when Lance was beginning to think it would never end, he hung still in the darkness once more. Then, with a sudden jerk, he was dropped downwards. He was falling again, and this time the fall didn’t stop. He fell faster and faster, his heart leaping into his throat as he sensed some sort of ground coming up.

Before he could hit the ground, though, he was tugged sideways, through what felt like a thin, cold waterfall. And then he was in water, drifting through it. He was deep beneath the surface of an ocean, bubbles rising all around him, a current carrying him. But he could breathe, and there was light streaming in from the surface somewhere around him. Lance took a deep breath, grateful for the calm moment.

A low rumbling noise echoed through the water. “Blue?” Lance said, bubbles streaming from his mouth. “Is that you?”

The rumbling lightened somewhat, like an affirmation. Lance smiled. “Good to know not everything is out to get me. Hey, do you know what that… that dark thing was?”

An image surfaced in his mind, a plant made up of shadows, curling through a pool of blood. It was gone as quickly as it had come, leaving Lance confused. “Uh. What does that mean, Blue?”

Blue rumbled again, and Lance got the feeling that she was worried, but he couldn’t understand why. Then things changed. Only a moment ago the ocean had seemed innocent, but now it grew darker in a matter of seconds, and colder. Lance kicked his feet, not content to let himself drift when it felt like a predator was lurking somewhere. “B-Blue?”

Blue gave a roar, like a warning, and Lance was dragged through another waterfall into another ocean. This one was freezing. Lance let out a cry, only to realize he couldn’t breathe here. He struggled not to inhale water. But he lasted only moments without oxygen before the frozen ocean was rushing into his lungs, the darkness of imminent death spiralling its way into Lance’s head and blooming like a flower behind his eyes.

The last thing he saw was something with teeth rising up to devour him now that he was easy prey.

\---

Lance bolted upright and gasped for air. His room was dark, and for a second he thought he was still in the endless frozen ocean. After a moment he convinced himself that he could breathe normally, but he still struggled to get his heart to beat slowly, and to get his mind to stop racing.

There was a faint rumbling in the back of his mind, and he reached out, grasped it tightly and clung to it. “Blue,” he said softly. “I was just dreaming. I’m okay.”

The rumbling became more insistent. Lance blinked, not quite understanding. Then he grasped that Blue wanted him to come see her. “Okay,” he said under his breath, “I’m coming, then. I really am okay, though.”

With that, Lance got out of bed and headed off down the hallways toward Blue’s hangar.

He didn’t bother with silence or stealth, guessing that everyone had pretty much forgotten he existed by now. That seemed like it happened whenever he wasn’t around. The hallways that Lance took were all empty, anyway. Remnants of his dream made him feel like he was being followed, but he tried to ignore the prickling sensation on the back of his neck.

Blue’s hangar was just like the rest of the castle: sparingly decorated, well-lit, and sometimes cold. But whenever Lance entered he felt welcomed. Now, the second he walked in, Blue gave a gentle rumbling purr in his head, and he broke into a smile. A worn, tired-looking smile, but it was still a smile.

Instead of leaving Lance standing in the hangar, Blue opened her jaws, and Lance walked in, settling down into the pilot’s seat. “What did you need me for, girl?” he asked, looking curiously around the cockpit.

Blue’s answer was a little bit elusive. She sent him a feeling of concern, and then sadness, along with an image of tangled shadows.

Lance blinked. “Wait, so you were actually in my dream?”

Blue confirmed it with a rumble, and Lance raised his eyebrows in surprise - then quickly stopped when that hurt his face. Dropping back into a neutral expression, he said, “So you can reach into my mind even when I’m asleep? Wow. You learn something new every day, huh? So, why did you need to see me so badly, beautiful?”

Blue sent him something like a question. Lance took a second to interpret it. It seemed like Blue was asking him something about communicating - she wanted to do something, and wanted to know if he was all right with it.

Lance wasn’t sure of what it was, but he said yes.

He felt Blue’s energy wash over him like a wave, and then he was drowning in it. It was only moments before he broke the surface, though, but he wasn’t in Blue’s cockpit anymore. He was standing in the dark, but it wasn’t the terrifying sort of darkness from his dream. It was peaceful darkness, and it didn’t feel like an endless space.

And then the stars lit up, and Lance felt small. They glowed white and silver and blue and purple against the silky blackness of what Lance now saw as the depths of space. But he didn’t feel that aching, painful smallness that sometimes overtook him when he was looking at star maps, or even the less terrifying smallness of soaring through space on a mission. This was a smallness that made him feel insignificant and incredibly important all at once.

Blue roared, and Lance turned around to see her behind him, translucent like a hologram. She crouched down and rested her chin almost on the ground in order to be closer to Lance’s eye level. It was like she was asking him to look into her eyes, so he did.

He was sucked into the yellow glow, and felt a tremendous energy. Lance became a part of it, and was pulled along with its movement.

With the energy, he rushed forward. And then he started to see images, searing themselves into his eyes. Dark flowers blooming, people dying. Silver and gray tendrils curling around someone, slowly killing them. Lance didn’t know why he was being shown this, but he knew it had to have a meaning. He just couldn’t figure it out.

The images became more intense. Blood and silver, being woven together. Tears - he didn’t know how he knew they were tears, but he did - being pulled into the mixture, and darkness wrapping around it all. It was wrong, Lance knew that much. Wrongness just surrounded it.

And then Lance was pulled away by the energy, sent swirling back into his own self. It was confusing for a second, and Lance shook his head slowly, trying to orient himself. His senses felt heightened, sharp. Blue was still gazing calmly at him. There was a sense of purpose in her stare, but Lance still couldn’t quite puzzle through it. Blue sent him gentle waves of reassurance, and Lance realized his breath had been coming quickly, in sharp bursts. He slowed his breathing, and smiled at Blue again. “Okay. I don’t think I totally understand this, but I can try. Okay. Thanks, beautiful.”

Blue rumbled softly, and he was pulled again, and then Lance was back in Blue’s cockpit like he had never left. He actually kind of figured that he hadn’t - Blue had been showing him something in his mind. He took a deep breath and stood, not sure of how much time had passed, but feeling like it had been quite a bit. There was a slight stiffness in his limbs that helped to draw him to that conclusion. Lance stretched, pulling his arms across his chest one at a time and then lifting them above his head, and Blue opened her jaws and he walked out.

The hallways were still quiet. Lance was feeling calmer than he had in days, and he headed towards the kitchen, having a feeling that this time Hunk would be there.

About halfway there, it struck him. The panicky feeling. He inhaled sharply and then his breathing sped up, and he dropped to the floor and curled up because it felt like the only way to protect himself from… from whatever was out there, whatever wanted to hurt him. _Go hide, go hide, you need to hide_ , was what the voice in his head was whispering. Lance nodded slightly to himself and grabbed the wall, half pulling himself to his feet. He stumbled back to his room, the panic only subsiding once his door was closed and the lights were dimmed.

He could breathe again. All that Lance wanted to do - or, well, all that the voice in his head was telling him to do - was to go lie down and pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist, but Lance did manage to go look at his silver shoulder again, despite the fear that spiked in his chest when he even thought of it.

He gasped upon looking in the mirror in his bathroom, and looked down at himself to confirm that it was real. The silver had somehow spread while he was in Blue, and spread a lot further. It covered his chest now, and when Lance turned, it was spilling across his back like a splatter of paint as well. And his arms, they were almost entirely silver. Only Lance’s hands were free of the color. There were some silvery patches on Lance’s neck as well, and he lightly brushed his fingers over them, but they felt just like normal skin. He checked his legs, and there were silver veins there now. There was even a single silver patch on his face, like a teardrop underneath his eye.

Lance didn’t know what to do. He ended up sitting down on the floor of the bathroom, his head leaned back against the wall as he tried not to throw up. Maybe figuring things out could wait until he stopped panicking and didn’t feel nauseous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sitting here laughing right now because this chapter essentially wrote itself. I was NOT expecting it to be so long, to be honest. Thanks so much for the comments I've gotten, and whoa, I can't believe I have almost a hundred kudos on this story - thank you to everyone!
> 
> If you guys want to come talk to me, I'm on tumblr [here](http://cipheredsong.tumblr.com)!


	4. You're Here (To Pull Away the Blindfold)

Lance was not afraid.

No, he was petrified, absolutely terrified, of what was going to happen next. He was always trying to guess at what was coming, what new danger might be waiting to prey on him.

He froze up when he had to interact with his friends. Meals felt more awkward than they ever had before, although the situation would have been a lot worse if Lance just didn’t show up - he peppered conversations with jokes in the hope that it would hide how terrified he felt, and some of them got a few laughs, but there was still tension hanging in the air. It was clear that not everyone was aware of it: Pidge, Allura, and Hunk all seemed unaffected. But Lance caught Shiro giving everyone uneasy looks when he thought no one could see, and Coran seemed generally uncomfortable with how awkward everything felt. Keith was just Keith, and Lance couldn’t tell from a glance how the tension made him feel.

Lance also continued to show up for training consistently. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t. Each time he followed a command from Shiro or moved to protect someone, Lance felt like he wasn’t a proper part of the unit everyone was supposed to be. Smooth, easy movements became stiff and robotic, and Lance knew that he was bringing down the whole team’s performance, but he couldn’t up that performance when every extra second spent on the training deck brought with it fears of someone walking in and asking him questions, wanting to know why he was training on his own - it wasn’t exactly normal for him.

Team bonding was the worst of everything. Fortunately, they had only brought out the mind-meld helmets once, and Lance had managed to stay focused on the task at hand, forcing his panic to the very back of his mind where no one else could reach it. After every ‘bonding session’, Lance would come up with an excuse that would take him out of the way of everyone else, and would then retreat to the safety of Blue.

It was nice to talk with Blue, and Lance had always thought that, but now it was more important to him than almost anything else. The only hard part about it was that Blue couldn’t talk back. She communicated more in images, feelings, and impressions than actual words. Lance missed talking, and missed the sense of being part of a group that came with hanging out with the rest of the team, but every time he thought about that, the voice in his head reminded him of just why he was avoiding everyone: he was useless to them, didn’t pull his weight, they all didn’t tell him how they really felt about him… the list of reasons stretched on. But the top reason on the list was to prevent them from seeing how he was slowly but surely turning silver and gray.

Lance normally kept excellent track of time - he marked down every day that they had been out in space. But ever since that last diplomatic mission he had started to lose track of the days. They blurred together, one after the next, and Lance still dutifully marked them down, but they didn’t really have any meaning. It should have worried him, he knew that, or he sort of knew it. But he found himself not particularly caring. He cared more about how his legs, arms, and torso were now nearly completely silver, and how more patches of the color had appeared around his eyes. It added still more time to his skincare routine now that he had so many patches to conceal.

And so Lance didn’t know exactly how many days he had spent trying to avoid the rest of the team until Keith came up to him as he was leaving the training deck one day. “Hey,” Keith said, “we need to talk.”

Keith never had been one for avoiding the point.

Lance froze up for a moment, trying to figure out a response that would get him away. Once he was off doing something else he could claim that he had just forgotten to talk to Keith, or he could get himself involved in some bonding time with Blue and say he’d lost track of time. Then, before he could make any excuses, Keith positioned himself directly in front of Lance and said, “I know you’re about to leave. You’ve been doing that a lot lately. Why?”

Lance desperately fumbled for words, any words. A snarky comment would work just fine, or some response about what he had really been doing. The words refused to come.

Keith glared at him when he failed to say anything. “Come on, you’re always talking. Well, I guess you haven’t been lately. But you need to have an answer. It’s not that hard.”

This was the exact confrontation that Lance had been so afraid of for the past… few days? Week? And Keith clearly didn’t get it. It was that hard.

Keith got tired of waiting again after a few seconds and burst out, “You’ve been avoiding everyone for over two weeks, Lance! And you think _now_ is the right time to be quiet?”

Lance opened his mouth and he really tried to say something, he really did, but nothing would come out. And then his body went on autopilot, having figured out that nothing was working, and followed the urge in the back of Lance’s mind that was telling him to get out of there. So Lance sidestepped Keith and broke into a sprint, heading towards Blue’s hangar and safety.

He heard Keith’s shocked noise behind him, and heard Keith start to follow him, but the footsteps stopped after a second. Lance didn’t look back until he was entering Blue’s hangar, and by then Keith was long out of sight.

Blue let him in, and Lance settled into his seat, staring out into the emptiness of the hangar with his arms wrapped tightly around himself. The hangar wasn’t empty for long, though. Keith appeared after only a few minutes. As Lance watched, he appeared to steel himself before walking up to Blue. Blue had to have switched on some sort of outside audio feed or something, because Keith’s voice suddenly echoed through the space around Lance. “Lance, I know you’re in there.”

Lance wondered if Keith could hear him. He hoped not, because if he could - well, he didn’t want Keith to know just how much his breathing had just sped up, or how he felt like he was cornered, and if Keith could hear him it would be pretty obvious.

Blue sent him as much reassurance as she could, wrapping Lance in a cloud of positive feelings, and then Keith spoke again. “Lance… please. Let me in. You don’t have to come out, just let me in.”

Lance hated himself for actually considering it for a moment. For the most fleeting of moments, he thought, _I should let him in, he can help_. And then the voice in his head kicked in and said, _No. No he can’t, he’s just going to hurt you again_.

Lance hadn’t bothered fighting off the voice in a long time, so he didn’t try now. “Lance, I know you can hear me…” Keith trailed off for a moment. “I let you in,” he finally said. “It was hard, but it was the right choice, and I thought things were getting better between us.”

That hurt more than Lance wanted to admit, because he knew how hard it had been for Keith to open up to him, how long it had taken. They had just been starting to act like friends. Lance had put aside the rivalry, mostly, and Keith had stopped getting defensive around him. And then things had changed again - Lance wasn’t even sure of how. Was it one bad day? One conversation? He would have thought that he would remember an argument between the two of them.

_It doesn’t matter, what matters is that he doesn’t care about you_ , hissed the voice. Lance paused, torn, suddenly wanting so badly to let Keith in. He could feel the voice coiling tightly around his mind, crushing the thoughts about friendship and help. But Blue was there, too. She was pressed against the back of Lance’s mind, a gentle rumbling purr reverberating through his skull.

Lance hesitated for several seconds, fighting against himself, and then Blue took matters into her own giant metal paws. Lance felt her shift, and then she opened her jaws to let Keith in.

Lance panicked and was ready to scramble out of his seat and make a break for it again, but Blue was still a gentle presence in his mind. She rumbled softly, and Lance sat still long enough for Keith to walk in.

Keith stopped before really entering the cockpit, eyes roaming the space as he took everything in. His gaze eventually landed on Lance and stopped there. Lance shifted uncomfortably, quickly straightening his arms and sitting on his hands to prevent himself from curling into a ball again. “Um,” he said, then stopped, not sure of what to do.

He was expecting Keith to say something, even though he was definitely a ‘act-now-talk-later’ sort of guy. That was just Lance’s way, normally, to talk. So when Keith walked over and nudged Lance so he could sit down next to him, Lance froze up even worse than he had while leaving the training deck a few minutes previously.

Keith sat there without a word for at least a minute, so close that he and Lance were pressed against each other, because the seat wasn’t designed for two people. Slowly, Lance relaxed. By the time Keith finally said something, Lance was actually feeling two things that he hadn’t felt in a while: warm and safe.

“Thanks for letting me in.” Keith looked over at the same time as Lance did, and Lance looked away.

When he turned to look again, Keith still had his eyes on Lance’s face. “I - well, it was Blue.”

Keith smirked a little, and turned to look at Blue’s controls. “Thanks, Blue,” he said, before going back to Lance. “So… listen. I know I’m not anyone’s first option for conversations, but I feel like normally you would go to _someone_ if something was wrong, and you haven’t. And I can tell that something is definitely wrong. If you want to talk, I, uh, I’m here.”

The voice in Lance’s head sang out in a high pitched terrified keening that had Lance gritting his teeth. He saw an immediate startled expression burst across Keith’s features for just a second, like he was worried that he had done something wrong. Lance immediately tried to smooth things over by looking as calm as he could. With the voice wailing away, though, and Blue still trying to give him emotional support at the same time, and Lance’s own thoughts sandwiched in the middle trying to sort themselves out… well, it was too much. Lance’s exhausted, overworked brain couldn’t take it. So obviously the _completely_ logical course of action was to start crying, which Lance promptly did.

He was crying for a good ten seconds before a tentative, awkward hand came to rest on his shoulder. Despite the voice’s volume somehow going up still further, screaming at him to pull away, that simple touch was all the prompting that Lance needed to swiftly turn and throw his arms around Keith.

Keith took another few seconds to return the gesture, but when he did, it was the best feeling Lance had experienced in weeks. It just felt so real and honest and gentle, even if it was ridiculously cautious and Keith was clearly worried he was doing something wrong, and Lance buried his face in Keith’s shoulder now that he knew it was all right to do so. He was probably leaving a huge wet patch on Keith’s jacket, but Keith, to his credit, didn’t flinch.

After a few minutes, Lance’s crying slowed down a little, and he pulled away from Keith slightly to mumble, “Sorry.”

Keith inhaled sharply and then said, in a voice even more serious than his usual voice, “Don’t be.” Lance looked up at him, even though he knew his face had to be a mess right now, not sure of what to make of his tone.

Keith inhaled again, and then exhaled slowly, his eyebrows furrowing. He leaned forward a little, peering at Lance’s face. “Um, hey, Lance, what’s this?” He pulled one hand away from Lance’s back to gently rest one fingertip on a spot on Lance’s cheek, just below his right eye, where a patch of skin had faded to gray.

The voice in Lance’s head erupted into shrieks again. Lance was on the verge of doing the same thing, and Keith must have seen that, because he quickly pulled his hand away. “Lance, breathe. You’re not breathing.”

He realized that he wasn’t, and Keith was making a very good point. Lance gave Keith a weak, watery smile as he took a deep breath, and realized in the midst of it all that it was his first real smile in what felt like forever. He was doing a lot of things that he hadn’t done in a while.

Keith smiled back, and then his smile faded and he said, “Um, Lance. Does that have anything to do with how you’ve been acting lately?”

Lance blinked and looked away. Blue nudged at him, urging him to tell Keith everything, but the voice’s screaming was starting to be painful. It gave Lance a headache, pounding away in the back of his head. He knew that saying anything more was just going to make it worse, so he ended up giving Keith a desperate look, hoping he would understand without Lance having to cause himself more pain.

Keith’s eyebrows somehow drew even closer together. “So it does.” He looked thoughtful for a minute and then said, “How long has this been going on?”

Lance inhaled slowly. “Uh.” The past two weeks… maybe a couple weeks before that… “A-about a month,” he admitted, unable to find the will to look Keith in the eyes. He had a bad feeling that Keith was going to explode.

And explode Keith did, but not necessarily in the way Lance had expected. First he made a bunch of sputtering noises, then stared at Lance like he was a confusing puzzle, and then he finally said, “ _Why_ didn’t you tell anyone?”

Lance wanted to give him a direct answer, but felt like he wasn’t quite in control of his words as he said, “It just felt wrong. Like I shouldn’t.” _Don’t tell him everything_ , the voice in his head shrieked. Lance let go of Keith, pulling away a bit, ready to face Keith’s anger.

Keith still didn’t lash out, though. The voice warned him that it was bound to happen, but Keith just crossed his arms and said, “I can tell from how you’re acting that you’ve been hiding this for a while, so it’s not just that one patch, is it?” Before Lance could stop him, he leaned forward and swiped his hand gently over Lance’s face, his thumb rubbing away a lot of the makeup Lance had used to hide the silver on his face.

Lance immediately flinched, his instinct being to try to hide his face from Keith. But Keith was too fast for him, reaching forward to hold his face still, and rubbing against him to reveal more of the silver skin in the process. His concern was extremely obvious, breaking over Lance in waves that kept making it harder and harder for Lance to breathe.

Before he fully knew what was happening, Lance was hauled onto his feet by Keith and tugged out of the blue lion - Blue opened her jaw willingly, as if she accepted whatever Keith was doing on Lance’s behalf - and down hallways until the two of them reached Lance’s room. Keith pressed his palm to a panel to open the door, and then Lance was pushed inside.

Once inside the relative safety of his room, Lance managed to calm down again a little bit. While his room was nowhere near as comforting as the energy of Blue, it was better than being out in the open. Keith still had to propel him towards his bed and get him to sit down, but Lance ignored the voice, now quieter, long enough to softly say, “Are you… are you mad at me?”

He hadn’t meant for so much fear to spill into his tone, but it was there. Keith definitely heard it, and he said, “No, Lance, I’m not! I don’t know why I would be. But I don’t know what this is, and you should’ve come to someone about it. You aren’t acting like you know what it is either. It’s all over your face, has it been there this whole month?”

Keith’s confusion and whatever else he was feeling - was there exasperation in his voice? It sounded like it - were obvious enough to Lance, and Lance shrank from them, only for Keith to grab his hands. It was a desperate gesture, something that Lance knew he would normally never do. Just like he would normally never hug Lance. There were really only two things Lance could think based on that: either Keith was scared, or he was really trying to get through to Lance. Maybe both. The voice in Lance’s head tried to speak up and tell him it was neither option, but Lance knew better. He was willing to trust the voice, but he knew Keith, and there was no way that the voice was right in this case.

Acting on his sudden desperation to not lose this surge of not-quite-confidence, and to not lose this side of Keith, Lance yanked off his jacket and tugged up his sleeve, movements jerky and awkward. He held his arm out for Keith to see.

Keith reached out, turned Lance’s arm back and forth, gently ran his fingers over the silver skin like it would peel away, as if it were painted on. “What the-” he cut himself off. “Lance, you _don’t_ know what this is, right?”

Lance shook his head. “But there’s- there’s more.” He slipped off his shirt before he could change his mind.

The silence that took the place of Keith’s awkward worrying was painful. Each second that passed made Lance feel more like he had done something wrong and Keith was about to explode, to turn away from him and leave, to hurt him… and he didn’t know which of those things would be the worst.

His worrying was for nothing again. Keith inhaled slowly, exhaled, repeated the action. He was doing a lot of slow breathing and it made Lance nervous. “A month. Why didn’t you say something?”

Lance was struck by the fleeting thought that all of his worries about Keith seemed to be misplaced. He pulled his shirt back on, shaking a little bit, and draped his jacket over his shoulders like a cape, leaning away from Keith. When he responded after a moment, his words were spoken slowly and haltingly. “I was… scared. I didn’t want to be the… the problem. Like I always am. Everyone has their own stuff going on. No one needs me.” The last sentence was barely a whisper.

Keith shook his head fiercely, his hair swishing through the air and curling around his ears. With an obvious flash of irritation, he brushed the runaway strands away with a hand. “Lance, you always say something. This was the wrong time to change that. How would it have been a problem? How are you a problem?”

Lance reached for words and didn’t find any. Keith groaned and buried his face in his hands for a second. When he looked up the crescent shapes of his nails were left imprinted in his forehead. “I’m not good at talking, I know! But you could’ve told me.”

There was something new in his voice that Lance was too confused to interpret right then. “I couldn’t!” he burst out. He regretted it the second he said it.

Keith’s hands clenched into fists and he said, “Why not? You can’t just say that!” Lance knew he had to be getting frustrated now, had to be. But all he could do was start shaking his head desperately.

Keith grabbed his shoulders and said, “Hey. Stop. Calm down. Okay.” Lance stopped, trying to breathe the way Keith had told him to while they were in Blue. Keith’s face was twisted into a peculiar expression. “Lance. I know it’s scary, but we need to go see Coran, okay? He’ll know why you’ve been feeling like this. I promise that I’ll be there, I’m here for you.” With a now steely expression, Keith put as much emphasis on two extra words as he could. “ _I care_.”

Lance dissolved into tears again, cursing himself for it. He had shown enough weakness already. The waterworks needed to stop. He would have liked to take a minute to compose himself, and maybe dry his face off - the voice in his head added, _And maybe you can lock yourself in the bathroom_. Lance found that he could dismiss that thought, though, if only because he knew that Keith would break down the door, and even go get everyone else to help him. 

But taking a moment was unrealistic right then. So Lance followed Keith through the halls again, his dread growing with every step. But he didn’t say a word. He could do that much, at least, to try to protect himself, though from what he didn’t know. Things were getting too confusing for him to tell.

Coran took one look at Keith’s worried face and Lance’s silver, tear-streaked one and dragged them both off to the med bay. Keith made sure Lance sat down, and then sat down next to him.

The first thing Coran said was, “Well, this doesn’t look so good. Lance, I get the feeling you’d rather not talk right now, right?” Lance nodded. “All right, so Keith, tell me what you know.”

“Lance said this started about a month ago. He’s got gray patches all over, and I guess that they’ve been spreading. He told me that he couldn’t tell anyone about it, although he didn’t… um, didn’t get the chance to tell me why.”

Coran fiddled with his mustache for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “So would you say that this started around the time we visited the Telluran?”

That was the species they had made an alliance with a while back - the tall ones, living on the planet where Lance had fainted. Lance gave the tiniest of nods, and Keith, watching him, nodded more vigorously. “Yeah.”

Coran nodded slowly. “So this might be a reaction to something on the planet.”

Lance found just a few words. “It - it must’ve been something after I… separated from everyone else.”

Coran nodded again. “Yes, that makes sense. That narrows things down quite a bit! Do you feel up to describing the things that happened during that time?”

_He isn’t_ really _being considerate. He’s just underestimating your strength, your stamina. He doesn’t think you can handle telling him_. The voice was trying to get Lance to shut up, shut down, shrink back into himself. But he’d had his walls broken down for the first time in a month, and so it did the opposite, pushing him to talk more. “Well… I just walked. And then, th-then I wasn’t feeling so good. I threw up, and I collapsed where- where you found me.”

Coran crossed the room quickly, pulling up some information on the planet and scrolling through files on native species of flora and fauna. Lance saw Keith tracking his movements. 

After a second Coran sighed heavily and closed out of whatever he was reading before opening a new screen. “This may take me a bit,” he said. “The castle updated its files on Xenth while we were there, but it apparently hasn’t sorted out the outdated files on now-extinct species yet. I’ll have to sort through them on my own. Why don’t you get some rest and come back in… a few vargas?”

Keith stood, and nudged Lance’s shoulder. Lance needed no further urging to get up and follow him. He always felt exhausted lately, so he wouldn’t be bothered by a chance to rest. There was a tiny part of him that had a bad feeling about being left alone, and having to face himself again, and Lance heard it, but that fear was swamped by everything else going on.

Before he even got the chance to think much, Lance realized they had arrived outside his room. This time he was semi-calm, calm enough to at least step forward and open the door himself. He could tell, based on the light streaming from the doorway into the dimly lit room, that Keith hesitated for a moment before following him inside. 

Lance rubbed at his face tiredly and glanced over at Keith. “Uh. Do you want to leave? So you can sleep?” That small part of himself didn’t like the idea, but what Keith wanted to do mattered more. He had already done far more than Lance would ever have expected.

Keith crossed his arms. Lance would have been offended if his memories hadn’t reminded him that Keith did that when he was being awkward.

“I can wait,” Keith said.

Lance blinked. “Oh. Okay,” was all he could think of in response. He turned, slowly, and then grabbed his pajamas and walked into the bathroom, closing the door and hoping vaguely that he didn’t seem unappreciative.

Staring at himself in the mirror, Lance grimaced. The makeup he’d used to hide the silver patches on his face was smudged and rubbed away, leaving him a mess. The tear stains and slight puffiness around his eyes in no way helped. He shrugged off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Some careful swipes with a damp cloth took care of the makeup and tears, and Lance then used another, clean patch of the cloth to go over his face again. He set it aside after that. It would normally be almost painful to go a night without his skincare routine, but Lance didn’t feel up to it just then. He changed, scooped up his clothes, and went back into his room.

Keith was waiting, still standing by the doorway and tapping one of his feet in a quiet rhythm. When he noticed Lance he straightened up a little, staring at his face. Lance brought a hand up to his cheek, realizing he must have revealed even more silver skin by taking off the makeup.

Keith seemed to snap out of a daze a second later, averting his eyes for a second before looking back to Lance and saying, “So you’re going to be okay for a few hours?”

Lance found himself wanting to put on a show right then, just for Keith’s benefit. He wanted to laugh and tell Keith that he didn’t have to worry about someone so awesome. He wanted Keith’s expression to lighten, and he wanted Keith to roll his eyes and respond with sarcasm.

Instead he acted how he felt. He didn’t hide behind a mask, even if it might have made Keith feel better. He just quietly said, “Yeah.”

Keith left, looking back over his shoulder, and Lance dropped his clothes at the end of his bed before all but falling over. He fell asleep, slightly more easily than he usually might, and was grateful for the brief quiet in his thoughts that came with unconsciousness. It seemed right then as if the small part of him that had worried about being left alone had had no reason to be afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this one took a while. I hadn't planned for it to be over a month between updates, especially since I actually have some free time right now. I didn't have access to a computer for a few weeks, and I was struggling with dialogue a lot, and interactions, and just... everything, haha. At least no writer's block has cropped up, and I felt satisfied with the end result. Hopefully there won't be such a long break between this chapter and the next, provided I don't run into more trouble! Thank you for reading.
> 
> Feel free to come visit me on [my tumblr!](http://www.cipheredsong.tumblr.com)


	5. An Update on Writing!

Hey guys. This is a note to you all because I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting for the next chapter for two whole months - a little more, really!

The next chapter of _Grayscale Images_ is currently a work in progress. What happened was that I had just gotten my computer working and the chapter started when school started up about a month ago. I've had practically zero free time, and in what I have had, I've had very little motivation to write Voltron, for some reason.

So! Here's the thing - I have everything all planned out, and I'm looking forward to writing the next chapter, I just haven't been inspired to do so yet. What will happen is that I'm going to take a bit of a break so I can take my time and write a good chapter for you guys. It may take a while, based on when I start feeling like I'll do a good job of writing Voltron again, but I'm hoping that s4 will be inspiring and it won't take forever.

In the meantime, I'll be working on some other projects, both writing and art, as I try to regain my Voltron motivation. Please feel free to come hang out over at my tumblr [here](http://cipheredsong.tumblr.com), I'll be trying to post updates sometimes! (Anything to do with this fic will be tagged as 'grayscale images' if that helps.) I'd love to talk to you guys.

And while I'm here, I really want to thank you all for the positive support for this fic. It's been two months since I updated, but I'm still getting kudos and I've gotten the sweetest comments, and so I just need to say thank you guys so much! It means a lot to me. You're all amazing.

I hope to see you all soon!


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